zombies (or: why am I afraid of the dark?)

...the dread of something after death, 
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others we know not of... 

                               (Hamlet, III. i. 78-82)

I have a problem. I can't walk down the stairs. It's not a physical problem. My legs work fine. They work great. I just can't make them take that single flight from the front door of my flat to the front door of the building. I can't do it. 

There are zombies in the hallway. 

Don't laugh. I'm afraid of the zombies in the hallway. Okay, laugh a little. I deserve it. 

Walking into my flat from outside goes like this: 

Open the big red front door. Fumble for the timed light switch. Hope the timed light works, which it sometimes doesn't. Walk down a narrow hallway for approximately six meters. Fumble for the second timed switch that will light the first floor landing. Walk straight ahead up seven stairs. Turn one-eighty degrees and walk up seven more stairs. Open the right hand door. You have arrived at your destination. 

Walking out of my flat goes like this: 

Take a deep breath. Listen closely for suspicious thumps, rustles, or growls from behind the door. Slowly open the door a crack, for better audio. Listen again. Hear absolutely nothing. Throw open the door fast enough to knock out anyone (anything) lurking behind it. Slap wildly at the wall until you hit the timed light switch. Hope the timed light works, which it sometimes doesn't. (At this point, if the light switch doesn't work, retreat immediately and cancel your plans.) Once the light is on, do a quick visual scan of the three square metres of space you can actually see. Try not to listen to your own accelerated heartbeat. Instead, listen for noises from the bottom of the stairs. Try to make your knees work. Try to make yourself shut the flat door and thereby cut off your only escape route. Don't think about the way the darkness from the hallway presses itself well into the half-way landing, where you have to turn a one-eighty. Don't think about the total, enveloping blackness you'll encounter when you do. Don't think about the way the zombies will throw themselves, bloody and clawing and hungry, out of that cold darkness and onto your face.

arktimes.com  

I need a moment. 

I blame two people for this fear. First, I blame an ex who made me watch that movie, World War Z. I was never afraid of zombies until they became wall-scaling, leg-pumping, frog-leaping athletes. Zombies are supposed to be galumphing fools, endearingly trailing bloody intestines behind them. Easily outwitted and outrun. Only a threat in great numbers that would not be able to lurk silently in my hallway. But fast zombies? FAST ZOMBIES.

Second, I blame my flat mate, who innocently suggested, a week or so after we moved in, that the second light switch at the bottom of the stairs was inconveniently positioned, as one must walk through the dark to reach it, and there could be zombies. She giggled. I giggled. Fun and games.

But then I couldn't shake the thought. Now every time I need to leave the flat after nightfall I go through a painfully intense internal struggle. I count off the reasons why I am sure there aren't zombies in the hallway. I run that mental tape on repeat that goes, they aren't even real, they aren't even real. I laugh at myself. I jump up and down and shake my arms. I pep talk. I am a zombie-killing machine. Then I spend a few minutes freaking out with my feet stuck to the floor and the door open, re-pressing the timer switch to keep the light on and sobbing loudly to the flat in general that I can't do it. I can't go down those stairs.

I've taken to carrying my umbrella. Not that it would do any good. But I don't own anything more dangerous that I can justify putting in my handbag. 

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME? I know there isn't a zombie in my hallway. I understand that the odds of the apocalypse starting with one of my neighbours, in this particular hallway, are about ten thousand bazillion to one. I understand that there are real threats out there, and that I should probably be more worried about rapists or that shark tornado movie coming true. I walk home at midnight, in the dark, in London. I can sleep with hairy spiders in my bedroom. I count myself a passably brave human. (Theme alert: that courage thing again, like here and here.) 

So I've been thinking about it a lot and here's my conclusion:
 It's the unknown.

When it's dark you don't know what's down there*.

 *(BUT YES I DO: IT'S ZOMBIES).

Scientia potestas est. Apparently Sir Francis Bacon said it first, but I reckon people have known it since forever. Knowledge is power. Knowing about a potential threat affords the power to combat it. If I knew for certain that at the bottom of the stairs there was a six-foot-three, left handed, heavily bearded guy with an 8.5cm knife, three toes on his right foot, and garlic breath, I might feel less fear. At least, it wouldn't be the sweeping, irrational fear that stretches and extrapolates until the hallway is packed with fast zombies like vicious, gory sardines. It would be a considered fear, an informed fear. A fear I could tackle by taking appropriate preventative measures (call police/climb out window/master muay thai). 

It's like the fear of pain compared to the fear of death. Pain is understandable, predictable. I know that to amputate my leg without anaesthetic will be agony. I will probably yell. I might pass out from it. But then I will be just me, only without a leg. That is what will happen. But to be told, You are about to die? This invokes that wild fear. I don't know what will happen when I die. In death I've lost all predictability. I've lost my ability to plan, to control. Almost anything seems less scary.

And I'm not the only one who's said this. I got more Elizabethan backup, guys. Shakespeare is like, so respected for his human insight and stuff, and some tormented soul in some play by him points out that almost anything (including your uncle killing your dad and your lover going round the bend [because you killed her dad] and drowning herself and your mother [maybe?] being a little bit incestuous) is better than that deep, strangling fear of the unknown.

So...
death = unknown = dark

That's why I can't walk down the stairs. I can't see, so it's scary. And I've made up some zombies to embody the scariness of it. Analysis complete. Being scared of the dark is so logical.

Basically I'm just like Hamlet. I barely even feel weird about admitting the zombie thing any more. 

Still can't walk down the stairs though.